Three Finnish projects among the Mies van der Rohe Award finalists!

The Mies van der Rohe Foundation announced today the shortlist of 40 projects competing for the 2017 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture. Finland has an amazing three finalists: Opinmäki School by Esa Ruskeepää and two projects by Anssi Lassila’s OOPEAA, Suvela Chapel and Puukuokka Housing Block.Only France, Portugal and the UK – still member of the EU – made it to the shortlist with more projects than Finland, four each. The Nordic countries are well represented since Denmark and Norway have three finalists as well – with a half Finnish landscape architecture office, MASU Planning, as design partner in one of Norway’s projects. Sweden, on the other hand, had only one hit in this year’s edition. Other three-finalist countries are two architecture superpowers, Spain and the Netherlands.Anssi Lassila’s achievement of getting two designs on the shortlist is worth sincere congratulations. This year only the Danish office Lundgaard & Trandberg as well as Rem Koolhaas’ OMA managed to do the same hat-trick.The winner of the award will be announced in April 2017. Read our previous post on the subject here.